A rare complaint about London Walks...the walking tour company
 

I have taken many London Walks with the original London Walks company and have always thought they were really very good. on March 21, however I took their explorer day to Salisbury and Stonehenge and it was terrible. When we showed up for the walk it was mobbed. They did not limit it to a decent amount of people. there were 96! I think they had planned on about 45...one bus...but did not cut it off. They guide tried her best, but what can one person do with 96 people. They called in another guide from London who was there for the Stonehenge part of the day. Obviously a stand in..willing, but not able! Three busses of people...it was so difficult to control that we even missed our train to London, thereby eating up most of the evening.

A bad way to spend a day a day when on holiday. An expensive waste of time.

Since they advertise that you just show up and go, no booking, I don't know how they can deal with situations like this. Too bad.

That is really too bad. I guess the company has become so popular that every tourist to London thinks it is a must-do!

I think one solution is to avoid taking their weekend walks/tours? I've only taken 2 of their walks. One was a weekday walk of Hampstead which was nice as the group was small and the area was quiet.

The second tour I took was a weekend walk of Marylebone. The group was larger (though nothing like 96 people!). Between the size of the group plus street noise and narrow sidewalks, it was difficult to hear the guide at times.

That weekend was the Spring Equinox -- not quite the Summer Solstice, but do you think that could have been a factor?

Britain had a massive systemic shock that weekend. Almost overnight, all of southern England snapped out of a prolonged, gloomy winter into daff-choked, blooming spring faster than I've ever known it.

Something odd happened to the economy too: restaurants that Saturday and Sunday were chocker (the Sunday was Mothering Sunday), even on Monday 23 slightly obscure places were surprisingly full, and the streets of tourist London were choked with Continentals, who obviously think those cheap socks at Primark won't stay that cheap for long. St Pancras was jammed with slow, confused, non-English speakers. UK clothing sales in March, according to one survey, were actually UP on 2008 - and UK house prices drifted up slightly too (those Russian kleptocrats are buying London boltholes which, in Euros, have almost halved in price in the past year, and there are more "Sold" signs round my house than "For Sale" ones ).

Meanwhile, service was awful. From trains to shops to restaurants, businesses seem to have shed staff without realising demand might rebound - however temporarily. Queues for everything - from cash machines to buying railway tickets - got longer than I can remember.

I don't think this is even an early glimpse of a dying recession. But businesses (as pessimistic as me about the short-term future) are reluctant to hire, many temporary immigrants have gone home, and - with London tourism buoyed by the state of the Euro and aggressive train and plane promotions - there just aren't enough staff to handle a surprisingly resilient flow of people.

Transatlantic tourism is down: but don't let that fool you. As long as the pound stays close to Euro parity, London's going to be an uncomfortable place to visit whenever there's a European holiday. And we're about to hit that stream of Easter/Mayday/Whit/Corpus Christi holidays our neighbours give themselves practically every week

In the late '80's and the '90's we often went on Historical Walks [I think it was called] with a wonderfully informative Blue Badge guide, John Muffty. His groups were usually fairly small so it was easy to follow and hear him. Along came London Walks, which had the money to get its brochures widely distributed and to have a very good internet site and it took over, with their many guides and huge throngs. Sadly, John went out of business although we heard that he is still doing some tours for some company.

We recently did the Harry Potter walk which had been highly recommended by a friend. I think her walk only had a dozen people. Our walk had over 60 when we started and more by the time we left. My advice would be to do it on your own if more than 20 people show up. Most of the time was spent waiting for people to cross the road and get into hearing range. We left early and were glad we did.

i used to do at least 3 london walks per trip but i've found they are getting larger groups with each year, even the more obscure walks and i no longer enjoy them...i'm heading to london again in may this year and haven't even looked at their line up...it's too bad...as someone above said you wait so long for the group to catch up and then it becomes very difficult to hear the guide in such a large group...

I'm so disappointed to read this. My son and I were planning to do several London Walks during our June trip. But we'll be there over a weekend...

Any chance they'll read the bad pub and start breaking up the tours into more than one group?

I hope they would start doing this. I think that it would be tough, using their current model of just show up. I don't know how they would plan. They have just gotten too successful!

I wonder whether you can show up, hold back, and then bail out before it starts if the tour looks too bloated? I'm not much of a tour type, but had been thinking about one of these on a weekday evening.

IMO London Walks has sort of developed the Rick Steves syndrome . . . . Good basic product, LOTS of American word of mouth/publicity, ends up too popular and loses some of what made them so good in the first place.

"<i>Any chance they'll read the bad pub and start breaking up the tours into more than one group?</i>" A few posts on travel forums isn't really bad 'pub' since maybe 30 people will read this thread while at the same time hundreds of people heading to London know they simply must do one/some of those "wonderful" London Walks. They have split up the Jack the Ripper walks since it started getting huge several years ago. But that is a special case since "the Donald" (Rumbelow, not Trump) draws huge crowds so London Walks sends along another guide to take a splinter group when necessary. That just wouldn't be possible for all the tons of other walks they offer.

Most of the walks are fine - but one has no control over how many show up.

Count me among those mystified at popularity of Ripper walk.

CAPH, I wouldn't get too bummed yet. I've been roughly a dozen walks (perhaps more?) and the only one I thought was wayyyy too crowded was the Jack the Ripper one (led by the author of a popular book on him - the above mentioned Donald). I still enjoyed it. The only one I didn't enjoy (and in fact walked away from when we reached a crowd) was a Beatles walk.

I've never done a day trip with them, however, so no experience there. At least with the local walks they are cheap and you aren't stuck with them if you decide you can't bear it (like the Beatles one - snooooooooooooze)

Thanks, Flygirl! Unfortunately, one of the tours my son has his heart set on is the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour one! But I'm encouraged by your post. We'll check 'em out and see how it goes. I've heard too many good things (including from both of my brothers) not to try.

And Jack the Ripper isn't on our list!:-D

I'm sorry to hear that London Walks might be a victim of its own success! I go on their walks all the time and have loved most of them We did bail on one where we weren't crazy about the guide and were very tired so we left midway through. I went on an Explorer Day a few years ago to the Cotwolds and thought it was terrific as far as tours go. There were about 30 people on that one, so it was pretty busy but not impossibly so.
My last few trips to London have been in the winter, and the walks were slightly less busy, but still with upwards of 25 people even on the more obscure walks. Still, that is a manageable size. The trip that included the Cotswolds explorer day was in late August, though.